Creating a Bowie Inspired Costume 2017

It's been an honor to join so many of my local musician friends to play a tribute to David Bowie at First Avenue called Rock For Pussy every year to benefit Feline Rescue Inc. in Minneapolis. This year I worked with local designer Megan Zwack to create a Bowie inspired costume for RFPXIII!

Photo by Tony Nelson

Photo by Paul Lundgren

A person’s fashion, especially a great costume, beams out energy. To me, it’s a catalyst to playing a role and inspires a good performance. Wearing a custom design is entertaining and fun but it can be even more so for the audience. I wanted to pull in a local designer to be a part of the Bowie tribute as collaboration between local music and style scenes. Music and fashion, especially if we’re talking about David Bowie, certainly go together.  His music has such a wide range and so does his style. So many people, both performers and audience members get dressed up for this show.

Megan sewing up finishing touches

Dr. Zwack is Megan’s own clothing brand and we connected on social media first. Music has been a major part of her inspiration.

Photo by Emily Hooper

“I have never been conventional in my approach to design and have always felt like a black sheep in the design community.  As a designer I have always found it difficult to create in terms of industry standards and have been completely uncomfortable with terms like ready-to-wear or resort wear.  Each of my collections or individual pieces is a song, a story, an album, or the soul consciousness of a musician or group ranging from Bobbie Gentry to Black Oak Arkansas.  The Dr. Zwack Lake Street collection is inspirited by the Wolfmother album Victorious.  The creative process starts with a song and I use my design skills, with fabric as my medium, to bring that song into physical form as a musician would use an instrument to create the song itself.  I have known from the start of my design career that my soul purpose is to dress musicians and singers for stage performance. After cutting my teeth in the local fashion design world, garnering skills and expertise, I am fully ready to branch out.  When designing for Chris Perricelli, inspired by Ziggy Stardust, I was very careful to amalgamate and ennoble the soul of both musicians while carefully riding the line of sophisticated design and costume ensuring that the story of both talents were represented.” – Megan Zwack

I had a feeling I should just contact her about making something special for this show. I sent her a message and she was thrilled for the opportunity to create something so we made plans to get together about it.

Hopping over to Eat Street Social we sat at the bar and flipped though one of my David Bowie books for inspiration.  We discussed costume possibilities and she was eager to work on a fun glam rock project.  

This was my first time meeting her and we hit it off quite well talking about music and style. She’s got an early 70’s vibe and a great personal style herself.

Photo by John Botkin

Megan’s first design concept came from her drawing:

 

She bought Italian silk material. One with a kind of a snake skin pattern for the jacket and the other was silvery metallic for the pants. She also scored some red vinyl to be displayed on the inside

and along the back of the collar of the jacket. After measurements and a session of pinning with a muslin pattern she got closer to pulling it all together. The design morphed into a fantastic glam rock costume that seemed to nod to Bowie from his Ziggy era all the way up to his more modern pieces.

Megan also lent me her hand made and cut Bobbie Gentry Stage Coat fringe jacket to be worn with my star pants that she altered along with a crazy full colored vintage polyester shirt. You can find this fringe jacket and more of Dr. Zwack’s hand made clothes at Showroom and she sells also by appointment on-line.

I wore the star pants, shirt and fringe jacket for the first set and then her full custom piece for the second part of the show. The clothes felt and performed really well with me and I couldn’t have been any happier with how it all turned out. On top of that it was a great show!!

Photo by Charles Robinson

Photo By Joe Teachworth

Photo by Danny Contreras Jr.

It's fun to mock the rock: Stonehenge!

As the kickoff to 89.3 The Current's 11th birthday, the radio station hosted a screening of the movie "This Is Spinal Tap" the classic music mockumentary from 1984, at the Fitzgerald Theater in St. Paul. Little Man got to open with a half hour set. What a blast!!

I figured to live it up, play the part and have fun with the opportunity. We played our own songs, deciding not to cover any Spinal Tap but played it up in a Spinal Tap kind of way. From my previous posts you know that I'm into glam rock and the fashion of the genre. I wore red satin pants with furry boot covers and had a leopard print long sleeve shirt. I decided to cut off the sleeves to make it a tank like Nigel wore in the movie but botched one side accidentally. So now I didn't have a shirt but saw these cut sleeves on the floor, so I put them on backwards on my arms and they became glamorous glam rock wings! I loved it. I made a necktie scarf out of the rest of the shirt's remains. In addition, my wife helped me with some great make-up. And oh yes, I did have an armadillo in my trousers.

Two days before the show my wife and I brainstormed how we could do something special for the show. We thought it would be hilarious if we lowered a mini Stonehenge onto the stage just like in the movie. Watch the scene HERE. We didn't have much time though!! Brigid said she could make one and thought she could get it done. I really didn't think it was possible in the amount of time we had. The night before the show she got stared while I was at rehearsal with the band. She kept sending me updates but I kept it secret from everyone including the band.

It was looking great. I contacted the theater to see if it was possible to do what we wanted as far as rigging goes and they confirmed they could. (Yes!) The day of the show Brigid was completely determined to finish the monument by the time we had to leave for load in at the theater. She cut, sanded, painted, glued and glittered what would become the greatest stage prop ever! It was to specs too, 18"! She attached it to a base to make the rigging easier, plus we didn't want it to fall apart while it was hanging there. The paint and glue weren't even dry yet. Although if it did fall apart it would have been a classic Spinal Tap moment regardless.

You should have seen the look on Brian Herbs face when he saw the mini monument in the van when I arrived at the rehearsal space. Completely bowled over. Sean too laughed in disbelief. "We're going to lower this down on our last song!" I said and we had a good laugh. It got us really excited.

Sound check photo by Sean Gilchrist

The Fitzgerald Theater is a really beautiful, old opera style venue. Last time I was there was when I worked with Ike Reilly in 2001. Everyone was surprised when we showed up with our prop. Alan, one of the theater tech's, rigged and hung it way up in the rafters. I made sure to tell everyone not to post to social media about it yet. Sound check went very well although it's a little different playing in a theater like that but very fun. Also, it's a little bit of a maze backstage just like the Spinal Tap scene. They provided delicious food from Cossetta's in the green room area. I was a little worried we'd be provided with coldcuts and miniature bread ;). 

Mid descent! Photo by Allison Wagner

Brian Herb, Sean Gilchrist and myself. Photo by A.Wagner

Brian Oak, who just recently became a Current DJ, MC'd the evening. They had pre-show Rock Band video game set up for the audience on the movie screen. Brian introduced us and out we went! Really fun to play that stage. The audience was great. I could see many of them out of their seats dancing. The set was a good rock'n  8 songs long. The last song was Sun from our last Original Face album. A perfect closer to accompany our descending Stonehenge. And then it descended on the opening chords of Sun, slowly lowered from the rafters and the crowd went bonkers. YEAHHHHH!! The lowering of the Stonehenge piece turned our show up to 11. It gave us that extra push, you know?! Brigid gets the MVP for sure.

After a standing ovation (Thank you!!) we we headed off stage, with some big laughs. My band mates are awesome. It means a lot to share these experiences with them. Not easy to play such a short set sometimes though. It felt like we were just getting warmed up and wanted to play another. After the monument was unharnessed we got it out to the theater lobby during intermission and people gathered to take pictures with it.

Then "This Is Spinal Tap" started. I hadn't seen it in it's entirety in years. Just hilarious. See it if you haven't! So, so fun to be a part of this. Now what to do with our little Stonehenge??

This drawing by Eric Tretbar was given to me on the Zodiac scene!

Special thanks to Gretchen Webber for the video. If you have pictures or video from that night, please feel free to share them here with us!

There Is A Mountain

I was recently asked by Scott Herold of Rock The Cause to to choose a song to record for a Donovan tribute album to benefit Huntington's Hope. I was very excited to have the opportunity to do so among other local artist and popular national as well. Donovan is a spiritual folk hero in my eyes. I love his fuzz rock stuff too but his acoustic songs strike a chord with me. I chose to do "There Is A Mountain" a song he recorded in 1967."

I immediately recognized this song's Zen content as the ancient koan goes, "First there is a mountain, then there is no mountain, then there is." The song carries the wisdom of "thusness," seeing things as they are and accepting that. I've been interested in and have been practicing Zen and meditation for many years (see my previous post on mediation) and I often draw inspiration from that sort of practice to create songs for my band Little Man. So in a similar way, I feel where Donovan is coming from and appreciate his work and was thrilled to have a chance to record it and be a part of this compilation.

photo by Emily Utne

The song is simple just as its content is and I wanted to keep it that way in my version. I didn't deviate too far from the original because of it's natural, organic feel. That's where it should be. It kind of repeats like a meditative mantra. While studying the song I noticed (for the very first time I'm sorry to say) that the melody is the same in The Allman Brothers "Mountain Jam." I had no idea The Allman's got it from this song. I'd been jamming to that song for years as a kid playing right along with it gaining my chops on guitar. So there is a tad of that in there too. You can here my version of Donovan's "There Is A Montain" and purchase the album Gazing With Tranquility to benefit Huntington's disease at Rock The Cause.


First there is a mountain.
You are brought up to know what a mountain is. Picture it in your mind, draw what a mountain looks like to you or go out and witness one. Massive stone object with white cap peaks. Separate from you. But a mountain is made up of so many things; rocks, dirt, trees, insects etc. Where does a valley end and a mountain begin? Show me?

Then there is no mountain.
A mountain is a human concept. It's what we call a mountain. We give it that name, thus we separated it from all that is, from us. It is useful to use language to communicate something but the word mountain is just a symbol. Go past that symbol. The mountain is not separate from you. From multiplicity to unity.

Then there is.
Back to being a conceptual mountain but this time carrying with it the wisdom of no mountain. This is the mystical realization. Nirvana is ordinary life. See things as they are. Thusness or suchness. Living in the world as a part of it and not separate from it is the wisdom. Know the multiplicity in unity. Also there is that spiritual seeking element that comes full circle. One might feel the need or the desire to seek God or Nirvana, enlightenment, spiritual bliss etc. You take that journey and then realize that you can't seek what you already have or are. It's not outside or separate from you. You return. Zen is ordinary life. Enlightenment is here and now. You have the wisdom, living in this world with all of it's joy and suffering and everything in between for which you cannot separate yourself from. It's all you.

But then again that it's self is just a concept... Zen is something to be experienced spontaneously. Experiencing with out labeling. Dropping all concepts is like an empty cup ready to be useful and receive or like a mirror that reflects but does not hold. Music is a great Zen-like thing in that there is no destination in a song. A song IS. Alan Watts said something like "if getting to the end of a song was it's intent, all musical pieces would be finales and the orchestra would be playing as fast as they could to get to the end". You listen and follow along to a musical piece and then it's gone. You physically can't hold onto it. You don't normally suspend that lovely chord forever and want to hear that chord for eternity because it makes you happy. The chord changes and you accept that.

There is so much to read about Zen, Buddhism, Eastern philosophies and all sorts of meditation techniques. This link on The Ox Herder is a good one that fits with my theme here with this song. Look into it if it interests you but while gaining that literary knowledge can be good, doing and experiencing them is at the heart of it all.

Three States and No Brakes

The Mad-Dub-Chi Tour
Little Man headed out on a small regional tour this past weekend hitting Madison, Dubuque and Chicago, supporting the new album Original Face. It's pretty fun to hit some cool cities over a long weekend and build up more fans and sell some albums. Brian Herb and Sean Gilchrist and I hopped in Walley the Waldoch van and headed out on the road. Meanwhile Brian is in the back asking me about this window shade that has been broken for a couple days, so he took the time to take it all apart while we were in route and totally fixed it! Brian is a true problem solving engineer. I should leave something broken in the van the next time we head out so he has something to do on the drive.

Our first show was in the Madison, WI area, to a place called True Coffee.

First time there, in fact all the clubs we played this time were firsts for us. True Coffee is indeed a coffee house. They roast, brew and serve their own coffee. I was a little unsure about playing there but they say they book all kinds of music. On the bill were a couple solo acoustic acts and a teen trio. It was all ages so the audience was pretty mixed but there were alot of people at this show, so we were very happy. Super small stage for us but we did our thing and enjoyed the set. The headliner brought up his guitar student, who was only 10 years old, and he sang and played his own song and was AMAZING!! The staff was super nice there.

This show was fairly early so we headed back to the place we were staying which was Sean's sister-in-law. Really fun spending time with her, her husband and 3 young girls. That home environment is a good feeling on the road for sure. They have great place across the street from the big lake so we grabbed some beers and hung out lakeside. So nice.

Buying breakfast groceries.

After a big home made breakfast we headed for Dubuque, Iowa and rolled into the Holiday Inn. Nice place! Only two blocks from the club. We also met up with our friend Bryan who was at the show in Madison and wanted to help with gear and merch. We got some press here too so that was cool to see! For food we got a tip to have a burger at Paul's bar so after load in we walked over. This little place was full with taxidermy! All sorts of animals and it was all in these blue lit glass cases that were showcased up high. It was only 8:30pm and people were already lit here. Got bumped into by a couple people walking by and the whole bar stared at me as I sat alone waiting for the guys to return from a smoke. "Who does that guy look like to you??" one guy said and kept pointing and yelling. Johnny Depp was the first response. Uhm sorta, gotten that before so that wasn't so bad. Zappa almost always. Guys get back here already!

Back at The Lift, the show started off with a guitar and vocal duo and fair amount of folks here too. We played two sets and the crowd ended up dwindling but this one guy stood right up in front the whole night dancing.
At one point he dragged over this huge 3 foot or so log to the front and danced with it. It was just hilarious. He was having a great time and so were we!

Photo by Bryan Ludwikoski At The Lift!

After a noon check out, breakfast was at a diner a block from the hotel towards the river. "Sunshine" or something like that it was called. It was just what we needed. Good, very inexpensive food. Sean got the catfish which was deep fried and served to him whole without the fish head. After he was done, all that was left was the full fish bone skeleton and he said he felt like Heathcliff as he held it up for us to see.


At 1pm we roll on to Chicago. 20East out of Dubuque towards Chicago across Illinois is an absolute beautiful drive in the summer. Lots of big rolling green hills and farmland with cool little towns to pass through. I loved Galena, the home of Ulysses S. Grant. This river town was so civil war era looking. I was telling the guys that and then we passed U.S. Grants house and was like "see!!".

So we're driving along on the highway, and Sean was driving, and I look over and the brake light on the dash was on. "Did you hit the emergency brake by accident Sean?" I asked. "No" he replied. After pressing on the brake pedal we knew we had a problem.  - "We have no breaks!! (pause...we each looked at each other) "AAAAHHHHHHH!!!!" Deepest secrets were confessed at 70 mph. -

Well it didn't quite happen like that but it was a bit scary! We were able to exit and get to a gas station to inspect further. We needed break fluid. Bought that, put it in. But then we checked underneath and when we pressed on the brakes it sprayed out the back axle area. This was a bigger problem. Brian got on the phone right away calling service stations. Most were closed. Two were open and one of them had the part we needed and it was 15 miles away in Rockford.

We had to get there quick because they closed in an hour. We knew we could make it if we were very careful. I took the wheel and could press the brake pedal almost to the floor with hardly any resistance but enough to stop the van given plenty of space. Seat belts on and back on the highway. Never hit the brakes. Coasted onto the exit to the stop light. Three stop signals to go! Slowly and giving plenty of space between us and the car ahead, we made it to the service station. The whole brake line needed to be replaced. Staying after hours they were able to do that for us. Whew!! We were so thankful. Still going to make the show. We left them an album too. Chicago or bust!!!

Walley and me

It is so fun for me to return to Chicago because I lived there for 8 years and started Little Man there. Tonight we play The Green Room which is a part of The Abbey Pub. The Abbey's main stage was a Mexican Wrestling event. Rock and wrestling. Our openers were really good with a ripping Chicago blues sound and the headliner was and excellent Americana rock style musician Benjamin Cartel with his band. Real nice people from Brooklyn. Super songwriting skills. Our show was great too. We rocked it. Also big thanks to our Brian Herb for fixing another situation as there was no sound man here!

It felt real good to play in the city again and a group of friends of all of ours showed up to see us. Real happy to see and hang out with old friends. Afterwards we headed over to The Long Room as I know the owners Clark and Jason. It was so cool to be there again. Love stopping by after a show here. Great to catch up. After that we stayed over at my good friend Dave Cottini's place and stayed up late with more friends.

Little Man at The Green Room Pub

Great photo Deb Sonzo!!


Thanks Beth for this late night or early morning Instagram shot!
In the morning we got up pretty early and headed back up to the Twin Cities. Walley surpassed 140,000 miles on the way home! This trip was just over 1000.

My band mates are the best. They are great musicians. I love touring with them and am thankful for their friendship and that special musician band bond comradery. We could have gotten into a serious accident but made it to all our destinations safely. Thanks to all who came out and supported us on this little run. Until next time!!

The Making of a Bowie Costume

I've been a part of an annual David Bowie tribute at First Avenue in Minneapolis for many years. Created by 89.3 The Current's DJ Mary Lucia, the show is called Rock For Pussy as it is a benefit for feline rescue. Local artists come together to play and sing their favorite Bowie song on the big stage. I've been a part of the band as a guitarist and I also get to sing some as well. So many people come out for this show and get dressed up in their favorite era Bowie styles and lots of make-up is applied by many of them. Getting glammed up can be a good time. Bowie fans and cat lovers unite for this once a year. It's a really awesome show!

This year I wanted to recreate one of Bowie's tear away costumes as well as a suit. If you've seen his show in London at the Hammersmith Odeon in 1973 towards the beginning of  Ziggy Stardust he has two people on either side of him run up and tear away his outer layer costume to reveal a new one underneath. I thought one of his Japanese capes looked really cool. I also liked his suits that were made with just one patterned fabric. In addition I liked some of the styles that his guitarist Mick Ronson wore.

I can hem my own pants (I'm not that tall so most of my pants have to be hemmed) but this was way beyond anything I could do. Plus this was way more than just finding some cool clothes at the thrift store as usual. I wanted to do something I hadn't done or worn before but I'd need help making my idea a reality. I needed to find a designer.

With some sleuthing with a few phone calls, e-mails and postings I was able to be connected with two University of Minnesota fashion design students who were up for the task. Sarah Forsythe contacted me first and she thought she could team up with classmate Lee Tran to make some costumes. We got together and I showed them the video of Bowie's tear away and we spent alot of time looking at pictures of him and glam rock fashion in general. They took my measurements and were enthusiastic about the project. We decided on a couple of ideas. A tear away cape with buttons on the front and back and a two piece suit that could zip half way with a big collar and bell bottomed pants. Now out to the fabric store.

This place we went to was HUGE! It 's called SR Harris. So much to choose from. Luckily Sarah had some ideas for where we could start. We picked out materials and designs we thought would be best. It was a visually appealing experience plus I couldn't help but touch everything I saw, stopping here and there, getting lost and loosing my place with Sarah. After quite a while we decided on a red, white and black big floral print for the cape and a green and shiny gold almost paisley pattern for the suit.

Then we met up again at my place and Lee and Sarah had me try on a basic pattern and measured and pinned me up. It took a couple of fittings to get things just so. We were able to do a test tear away at my place, other than that, my final fitting was at the show.

Test tear!

My first costume for the night was a slim fit silver pair of pants with a matching silver long sleeve shirt along with my cool maroon side zip boots (see my "Vintage SHop Hop" blog post) I had just picked up at a local vintage shop called Up Six. I got my hair poofed out in all directions and some green and silver eye make-up as well as a gold star painted on my chest by a hair styling salon that sets up shop at the show called Moxie.

After the first set I had help changing into the green and gold suit, huge suede platform boots and finally the cape.

I had asked the designers to be the tear away helpers but Sarah couldn't make the show so my wife Brigid helped with Lee. She was so excited! The song I was going to do this for was called "Star" from the Ziggy Stardust album.

I took the stage and played a couple songs on guitar with my cape on and then it was my turn at the mic. As the chomping chords of  "Star" on the piano started the song, the background singers sang "ooooh aahhhh..." and the guitar strummed it's first chords, I raised my arms to full outstretched length (which was the signal for my helpers to run towards me) to show the full cape and Lee and Brigid approached me as fast as they could from opposite sides of the stage. They grabbed the cape and tore it off me before I started to sing the song. It worked!! It was great!!!! So so fun. The audience loved it and the song went on and I had a blast with it. I felt like Bowie, Bolan, Rod Stewart and Jimmy page all at once with that two piece outfit. Rock!!

Here's the video of the tear away!

It was so cool to have an idea, see it through and have it work so well. That felt real good to me. I'm sure it did for the designers too. Sarah and Lee did a great job and it was really fun to work with them both. More photos and videos of all the performers on Facebook.

photo by Charles Robinson

photo by David Tanner

With Reed Wilkerson photo by Amy Wilkerson